876 Poe, Edgar Allan
disorder. First, Usher’s illness is the reason the nar-
rator, who has maintained only a limited friendship
with him, comes to the mansion to visit. Once the
narrator engages in conversation with Usher over
the course of several weeks, it is clear that his illness
extends beyond the physical into the psychological.
Readers discover the nature of Usher’s malady is
that of a “constitutional and family evil” and reflect a
“morbid acuteness of the senses.” After the supposed
death of Usher’s sister, Madeline, his illness seems to
extend itself into fits of insanity and hysteria.
While Usher’s illness develops from external
(physical) to internal (mental), the illness and char-
acter of his sister Madeline are much more com-
plicated to understand. The narrator tells us that
doctors are baffled by Madeline’s disease, which is
described as the “wasting away of the person.” Mad-
eline’s illness and appearance in the story might best
be understood on a figurative level. Usher’s illness is
literal, even though the narrator refers to him as a
hypochondriac several times in the story. Madeline,
who we learn is Usher’s twin, may be seen as his
mirrored reflection or alter ego, his internal psyche,
which he tries to rid himself of by burying Madeline
in the vault beneath the house. While some readers
may question the credibility of Madeline’s ability to
escape the vault, which would have been impossible
to get out of because of its “massive iron” door, if
Madeline is the representation of Usher’s insanity
and hysteria, then the fact that she is able to escape
the vault on her own and take Usher’s life at the
end of the story is easily explained: She represents
the terrifying mental illness that Usher cannot suc-
cessfully bury. Usher suffers from fear of himself,
ultimately, which leads to his demise and the literal
collapse of the “house of Usher.”
Usher and Madeline are not the only characters
in the story to be plagued with illness. The narrator
also finds himself beginning to “catch” the insanity
that has gripped the Usher household. Contagion of
illness, superstition, nervousness, and sleeplessness
all plague him once he and Usher bury Madeline in
the vault. The narrator’s illness, nonexistent outside
the Usher mansion, quickly manifests itself once he
has spent several weeks in it.
As the analysis of illness moves from a literal
to figurative representation, readers must take into
consideration not only the characters but the Usher
mansion itself, which many would argue takes on
the role of a character as well. When the narrator
arrives at the house, he describes the murky, fetid
environment in which the house sits, which leaves
him with “a sense of insufferable gloom.” First, he
observes the general appearance of the house as dis-
colored and covered with fungi. The scene consists
of decayed trees and a feeling of utter disease and
gloom. On the inside, which mirrors the physi-
cal appearance of the house’s exterior, the narrator
describes the condition of the master’s room with
its “feeble gleams of light” and furniture which is
“comfortless and tattered.” The room “failed to give
any vitality to the scene.”
Like many authors, Poe uses the theme of illness
to show the deterioration of one man’s world. Ush-
er’s health, fortune, and familial lineage slips away,
but not without a struggle to keep them in place.
Whether describing outside or internal “appear-
ance,” Poe uses the theme of illness to illustrate the
literal and figurative effects of fear on an individual.
Andrew AndermattPoE, EDGar aLLaN “The murders
in the rue morgue” (1841)
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue” was first published in Graham’s
Magazine in April 1841. The tale introduced C.
Auguste Dupin, a Parisian with a singular talent
for solving crimes. Poe again used Dupin and his
sidekick, the story’s nameless narrator, in two more
tales of ratiocination, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”
(1842–43) and “The Purloined Letter” (1844). The
two figures are forerunners of Sherlock Holmes and
Dr. Watson; indeed, Holmes and Watson discuss
Poe’s Dupin in A Study in Scarlet (1887), the first
of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels.
In writing “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”
Poe was influenced by Voltaire’s Zadig, or Destiny
(1748), which is referred to in Poe’s “Hop-Frog”
(1849), and several stories published in 1838–39
in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine about Eugène
François Vidocq, the chief Parisian detective under
Napoleon Bonaparte. Dupin mentions Vidocq by
name in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”